Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord: its lineage, descendants, and standing in Japan

Potato Flowers in Full Bloom Buried gem

A first-person, grid-movement 3D dungeon RPG. You explore stone-walled underground labyrinths one tile at a time, then battles drop into a third-person, turn-based view where you read each enemy's intent icon and pick the right answer: guard, dodge, or strike. It is built so every single battle asks for the best possible choice, a stoic design with no slack. You raise a party of up to three across classes like Knight and Shaman with skill trees, customizing race and hair. There is no harsh punishment for losing: a defeat sends you back to camp with your progress kept, so you simply return with a new strategy, and a new recruit grows up in just two or three fights, cutting the grind of the Etrian Odyssey line. About 16 to 20 hours to clear, around 30 for 100 percent, across four labyrinths. Made by the Japanese solo-feeling indie Pon Pon Games and published by PLAYISM. Overwhelmingly Positive in Japan at 658 reviews and 96 percent, yet the West has barely found it: only 218 English reviews, repeatedly called underrated and a hidden gem. English is already supported.

Dungeon Antiqua Buried gem

A Super Famicom-styled 2D dungeon crawl RPG by Shiromofu Factory, the work of the Japanese solo creator frenchbread, with pixel art and chiptune sound cast in an 80s-90s mold. Per Steam's own listing, its 2D map is described as expanding 'to match the character's field of view,' so the dungeon is never handed to you all at once; a wide variety of professions plus free party formation, paired with auto-generated maps, are built to be 'played over and over again,' while progression stays focused on 'hacking and exploration, with no redundant scenarios or direction,' carried by 'fast-paced, modern and comfortable controls' that reach down to full DualShock and DualSense support. It runs on Pyxel, the Japanese retro game engine by Takashi Kitao, and even ships a 'dungeon-antiqua.pyxapp' file for handheld consoles that support it. Released October 9, 2024, it is Very Positive at 91 percent over 373 reviews (338 positive, 35 negative), a paid title at $6.99 in the US (¥800 in Japan), not free, fully launched and not in Early Access, with no AI-generated assets and, per Steam's own content descriptors, nothing sexual (ids: none, notes: none). It supports English, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese, and with 144 of its 373 reviews in English (about 38.6 percent), the West has already begun to notice it: outlets including Niche Gamer and Automaton West have covered it, and publisher AMATA Games has announced it is bringing the game to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on July 30, 2026, alongside its existing PC release, so calling it purely undiscovered would not be honest, even though most of its audience still reads in Japanese. It is also the game that came first: Dungeon Antiqua 2 carries this same jobs-and-dungeons formula into a 10-job sequel. One note to clear up: this Shiromofu Factory / frenchbread is a completely unrelated namesake to the fighting-game studio French-Bread (Melty Blood, UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH).